r/procyclingmanager

So yesterday I'm cruising in my career save, comfortably in yellow at the Tour with more than a 3-minute gap on Pogačar. Stage 18 comes up flat sprinter stage, absolutely nothing for the GC to worry about. My rider's a climber/puncher, so there was no point riding and I just hit Instant Result to skip it.

Results comes back and... my rider is marked DNF for the stage?!No crash, no warning, no explanation, just wiped from the results and my whole Tour gone in one click.

Has this happened to anyone else? Lesson learned I guess, riding out every stage from now on.

Which stat is the most important for a rider you think?

Some of you gave me feedback on this back when it was rough around the edges. A few things you flagged then are fixed: the stat abbreviations are explained in the interface, rider ratings had a full pass, and the parcours bug on one-day races is gone.

Since then the game has grown a lot. Directeur Sportif is a free browser based cycling manager, no account, no ads, no install. On a phone you can save it as an app and it works offline.

• 34 real teams and 917 real riders, or build your own squad from scratch
• Season planning: race calendar, peak targets, training focus, transfers
• Roles and tactics for every stage, with a race log of what actually happened
• Title sponsor, prize money and a running team bank account
• Scout U23 talent and grow your own development team
• Careers, retirements and new riders coming through, season after season
• Promotion and relegation between WorldTour and ProTeams

Play: directeursportif.app
Updates and community: r/DirecteurSportif

Hi everyone,

I've been building a solo passion project for a while: a text-based cycling career sim called Le coup de pédale ("The pedal stroke").

You create a rider, pick your calendar each season, and make tactical choices race by race — safe, balanced, bold or downright reckless — while managing fatigue, injuries, reputation, and your team relationship over up to 12 seasons.

A few things it does that I hope this community will appreciate:

55 fictional races (grand tours, monuments, classics, stage races), each with its own terrain and multiple narrative variants

Fatigue that actually punishes overracing, with a real risk/reward tension on every choice

A recurring teammate, a rival storyline, a mentor role late in your career, Olympic selection, and a full trophy/Hall of Fame system.

Now fully playable in English or French

It's completely free, runs in the browser, no install, no ads, no data collected — https://lecoupdepedale.com

I'd genuinely love feedback, especially from people who know real cycling management games well — what feels shallow, what's missing, what you'd want more of.

Happy to answer any questions in the comments.

Hi, do all the riders have the same height ?

They all appear identical to me, except Paret-Peintre and a few very thin riders, and that's for the weight. But Politt and Carapaz for insance look identical.

If so, anyone knows a way to change that ?

Hi I am playing PCM26 and need some tips for this transfer system.

I haven't played this game for years so see me as a new player.

My current career is with a conti team so I know I have limits.

How do I get the best riders/talents with the points/budget that I am given?

Which riders do I scout before augustus and what do I do when the transfer period is started?

Any tips are welcome and thanks in advance!

I usually make everyone a domestique to the rider i want to win and with auto they will often real in the breakaway themselves but sometimes they just let the breakaway go and i'll try to manually real them in but i'm usually unsuccessful.

Hey guys,

I play the the pcm for about 10 years. Then and when. What never really changed appears to be the rushed mountain phases. Every time I am in the mountains, I want to get the feeling you have while watching the tours on screen. You see groups become smaller and smaller, people attacking, catching up, and it is very interesting to see overall how the mountains play out.

However in the game you mostly have your your group of contenders (like 30-40) split on the last mountain climb, if you are not on a stage with more than category 1 or higher mountains in one stage. I am a bit dissapointed by that.

I mean, I saw some things happening that impressed me. A huge breakaway splittet, Vinegaard got protected after his attack like 3 times by a teammember for a brief moment. But I don't even know if that was intentional or those guys were just dead and vinegaard was lucky to take some protection by them.

The rest of the stages are boring, I mean, you can enjoy a couple of stages, see how they detailed the stages and take some impressions. But it is not a real tour, no one is telling you about the villages you pass, about the mountains you climb etc. so you have the flat stages for what feels an eternity, which is why I put the tempo on x8, until the mountains come. And then it's mostly the same, until the absolut favourite attacks on the last climb. I rarely see another contender actually attacking. There also appears to be no fighting for ranks like 2-10.

Can you agree? Or Am I doing something wrong that I experience the game this way? Does a higher difficulty change something? Are there even patches, mods, that are boosting the intelligence of the drivers?

Hi everyone,

I’m playing PCM 2025, and as soon as a favorite attacks, everyone immediately jumps on his wheel and follows him. It’s basically impossible to surprise the peloton with an attack once you get inside the last 60 km.
And even if a favorite somehow manages to get away and opens up a gap, the riders behind will go absolutely all-out to bring him back. There’s no real period of hesitation or watching each other that could benefit the rider up the road, no smart energy management from the chasers, and basically no situation where the teams refuse to work together or start looking at each other. They just immediately ride at 100% to bring the important rider back, even if it means completely blowing themselves up in the process.
As a result, most of the time you end up with a bunch sprint or a group of favorites arriving together, and it feels like there’s very little room for attacks.

I was wondering if this AI behavior has been improved in PCM 2026? Apparently Cyanide released a patch specifically aimed at improving AI energy management and race tactics, so I’m curious to know if it actually makes a noticeable difference in this kind of situation.

Cheers!

https://preview.redd.it/bm885a5f01jh1.png?width=1197&format=png&auto=webp&s=1eaa4cefbda0da9e5055093ec5fb2101dc37495e

https://preview.redd.it/acopd27uiqih1.png?width=580&format=png&auto=webp&s=5a3af38b880d5f08b87416e6e29baade17baf9c6

Has Cyanide still not sorted out this problem with Intel graphics cards?!!!

Hey guys,

Just me telling you about my latest journey. I was a couple of seconds behind Pogacar with Seixes in the Tour der France when I experienced that Pogacars Team took no effort to keep him in yellow. There was a huge breakaway group in a mountain stage, full with people behind around 10 minutes. I thought that the time-distance would shrink automaticly, but at the end I was suprised that 4 or more drivers now had like 4 minutes on me and pogacar. That eventually won Oscar Onley the Tour de France. Pogacar still made it to the second place though.

So I just want to war you, mainly the inexperienced people, to take break away groups seriously. Especially with former contenders that fell behind in them.

Have a great week

I have scouted a 5.5 star rider but he is not appearing in the draft for me to select him for my youth team in either the "free riders" or "scouted riders" sections

I mistakenly signed too many riders for next year already so can't offer a contract to my full team so was hoping to get him in U23s for 1 year then promote.

He has not signed with another team already so I must be missing something obvious.

Anyone else had this?

https://preview.redd.it/tloc8psf4mih1.png?width=1579&format=png&auto=webp&s=8d20a4477a6d1454eb74496642ee2cc4bed1ede0

https://preview.redd.it/68kj44kh4mih1.png?width=1552&format=png&auto=webp&s=d05c0bd8f9449872c1f8ab81fa0ad8b530eb9a24

https://preview.redd.it/a4987xfk4mih1.png?width=722&format=png&auto=webp&s=6b9ba61e06bd7cd3df30c54eeb0a00309557d26f

https://preview.redd.it/lzsescyn4mih1.png?width=752&format=png&auto=webp&s=b7e54640c035ca74f12745cb0cd93351b08c776b

Hi I need some help with choosing a sponsor.

I haven't played PCM in a while so I am now in my first season with a continental team. I am getting sponsor deals that are higher then my current budget but are from type 1 sponsors. But I have to answer them before I know if an interested sponsor from type 7 will give me an offer and it is unknown how much they wil offer. What is the better option wait for the big company or take a 2x increase of budget from your current sponsor if you are doing well?

Thanks for the advice!

Hey guys

As you all know, there are still multiple issues with the game, and we haven’t had an update in over a month now. Do we have any updates on when Patch 3 might be coming? The problems are game ruining for me, so Cyanide/Nacon, start respecting the community and get to fixing some of the issues!

And to help you out, here are some of the major ones:

• Season Planner
  • Unrealistic race schedules
  • Peaks placed too close together
  • Difficult/impossible to manually remove individual races
  • Riders sometimes peak at the wrong time
• AI & Race Simulation
  • Unrealistic breakaways
  • Breakaways can gain 10–15+ minutes
  • GC riders sometimes don't chase when they should
  • AI behaviour can be strange in Grand Tours
  • Detailed Simulation doesn't always seem different from Instant Simulation
• Pro Cyclist
  • XP/progression issues
  • Form and fatigue don't always behave correctly
  • Peak Form can be inconsistent
  • Training effects can be confusing or incorrect
• Crashes & Stability
  • Career crashes
  • Pro Cyclist crashes
  • Crashes when advancing/simulating
  • Some saves can potentially become corrupted
• Performance
  • FPS drops during 3D races
  • Performance can deteriorate during longer races
  • Optimization problems on some systems
• Ultrawide/Resolution
  • Poor 32:9 support
  • UI scaling/positioning problems on ultrawide monitors
• Workshop & Database
  • Workshop databases sometimes disappear
  • Problems loading WorldDB
  • Possible save/database compatibility issues
• Race & Rider Behaviour
  • Strange rider schedules
  • Lead-out/positioning problems
  • Some riders behave unrealistically during races
• Visual Bugs
  • Rain effects sometimes don't match the road/weather
  • Various graphical/UI inconsistencies